Posted on 02/27/2012 3:19:43 PM PST by VinL
One week to the Super Tuesday Georgia Primary, Newt Gingrich is positioned to defeat Rick Santorum, who has momentum, and Mitt Romney, who does not, according to a SurveyUSA tracking poll conducted for WXIA-TV in Atlanta.
Gingrich gets 39% today, Santorum 24%, Romney 23%. Delegates are awarded proportionally, so Gingrich should get 3 delegates for every 2 that Santorum and Romney take. Compared to a SurveyUSA tracking poll 3 weeks ago, Gingrich is down 6 points, Romney is down 9 points, Santorum is up 15 points. Santorum's momentum may propel him during the final days before ballots are counted, closer to Gingrich, but it is unknowable today, 02/27/12, whether Santorum has the tailwind to catch Gingrich. Ron Paul is flat, at 9%, in 4th place.
Gingrich has a Minus 5 favorability rating, similar to Santorum who is Minus 6. Romney has a Minus 15 favorability rating. Paul is Minus 19.
Regardless of which Republican is on the ticket in the general election in November, Georgia remains a Red State, today's polling suggests. Romney carries the state by 7 points, Santorum and Gingrich carry the state by 4, and Paul carries the state by 3. In 2008, John McCain carried Georgia by 5 percentage points.
Cell phone and home phone respondents included in this research: 1,340 state of Georgia adults were interviewed by SurveyUSA 02/23/12 through 02/26/12. Of the adults, 1,156 were registered to vote. Of the registered voters, 457 were judged by SurveyUSA to be likely to vote in the 03/06/12 Republican Primary, including 6% of likely voters who tell SurveyUSA they have, in early voting, already returned a ballot. This research was conducted using blended sample, mixed-mode. Respondents reachable on a home telephone (77% of registered voters), were interviewed on their home telephone in the recorded voice of a professional announcer. Respondents not reachable on a home telephone (23% of registered voters) were shown a questionnaire on their smart phone, tablet, laptop or other electronic device. In this survey, cell respondents vote materially different than do home phone respondents. Among cell respondents, Ron Paul leads with 26%, followed by Gingrich with 23%, followed by Paul and Romney, tied at 18%. Paul's support is 4 times greater among cell respondents than among home phone respondents.
Interesting as to the vagaries of polling- if only cell phones were included-- Ron Paul leads (Last par. of article) Internals at link.
Newt will rise again.
Good news. GO NEWT GO!
I think it’s cool that Newt’s home state wants him. And if Newt wins Georgia, I will smile with him.
Though this caught my eye from above:
“Compared to a SurveyUSA tracking poll 3 weeks ago, Gingrich is down 6 points, Romney is down 9 points, Santorum is up 15 points.”
Perhaps Willard should let Rick and Newt go one on one ( :
It is good news PB- Here’s an excerpt from another article:
Gingrich predicted that after a good day on Super Tuesday, he will go on to win both Mississippi and Alabama, making him the front-runner once again.
“I think we will win both those states the following week. And then, all of a sudden, the same media, which said I was dead in the fall, I was ahead in December, I was dead in early January, I was ahead in mid-January, all of a sudden some of them are going to say, some were saying yesterday, Gingrich will be back again,” Gingrich said.
To bolster crowds, actor Chuck Norris will join Gingrich on the campaign trail in Georgia this week. Today, former presidential candidate Fred Thompson introduced a speech for Gingrich on the Tennessee capitol steps
Yup, he will.
First, this is bad news for conservatives, because if Romney ends up over 20%, he’ll get statewide delegates. IF he gets pushed below 20%, he gets no delegates.
Within each district, if the candidate doesn’t get 50%, the delegates split 2 for 1st, one for 2nd — so it’s important for Santorum to end up in 2nd place over Romney in each district, so Romney gets shut out of delegates.
I have an idea why don’t the Santorum people all vote for Newt in GA so he can win 50%+ and knock Romney out of the race. Oh wait that idea only goes one way. None of Santorum’s people have considered doing for Newt in GA the same thing they keep demanding Newt’s supporters in AZ and MI.
Newt only has to make up five points on Romney in Oklahoma to take second place from him.
Four percent will move him into third place, past Paul, in Tennessee. He will need to double his tally to get the 20% needed for any delegates. This would also move him past Romney, at 17%. He would have to take 10% of the 14% undecided, or pull it from elsewhere to do this.
Ten points in Ohio leaves him two short of second place (Romney has 29 to his 17.)
Something major could happen, I suppose. In any case, Newt has a lot of work ahead of him simply to get to second. If he can pull off any other state than the expected Georgia on Super Tuesday, that could help him.
Arizona is winner-take-all. Gingrich can’t get any delegates there, no matter what he does.
Michigan isn’t winner-take-all, but Gingrich is polling in single digits and therefore is unlikely to get CLOSE to the threshold to get any delegates.
So in those two states, a vote for Gingrich doesn’t get Gingrich a single delegate.
In Georgia, it is proportional. Santorum will get a delegate for each district he comes in 2nd; he could get 2 delegates by coming in 1st in a couple districts. And he’ll get 10-14 delegates for his statewide results, so long as he gets above 20%.
So it would be absurd to ask a Santorum voter to switch to Gingrich simply to get Gingrich more than 50% in a district; we don’t have polling enough to know whether Santorum is already mired in 3rd in some district (and therefore wouldn’t lose a delegate), and every vote counts for the statewide, so you are asking Santorum voters to take delegates away from THEIR candidate and give them to Gingrich.
That is fundamentally different; and in any case, the goal in Michigan isn’t to push GIngrich over 50% (it makes no difference statewide), but to push Romney under 20% and keep him in 3rd place.
So in fact, the BETTER way to keep Romney from getting delegates in districts would be for some GIngrich voters to switch to Santorum, pulling Santorum up above ROmney, EXCEPT if they know Gingrich will be over 50% in that district.
But nobody is going to ask for that either, because you don’t play games where you risk your own delegates.
2nd place gets none.
Yes, the winner of a district gets all 3 if they get over 50%.
But if Santorum is 2nd in a district, why would his supporters give up his delegate and hand it to Gingrich?
Nobody is asking Gingrich to give up delegates in Arizona or Michigan.
Why would you think Santorum should give up delegates to Gingrich?
The only time your suggestion would make any sense is if Romney is 2nd, and santorum’s votes would put Gingrich over 50%. But they don’t have polls per district that are good enough to project that outcome, so you’d have no idea which district to do it in.
If you were really looking to play a game, and you knew exactly what the votes were, and could control them, you could do this — in some places where Santorum is 3rd, he gives his votes to GIngrich to get him 50% and all 3 delegates; then in places where Santorum is close to 2nd, Gingrich can give HIM some votes to give Santorum a delegate and take it from Romney.
But there’s no real way to do that; you just don’t have control, or visibility.
Which is why nobody is stupid and calling for Santorum voters in Georgia to sacrifice their own candidate’s delegates over to Newt.
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